


Breakdown Lanes

by dustlines



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Cats, Comfort, Dean Winchester Prays to Castiel, Emotional Vulnerability, Episode: s08e08 Hunteri Heroici, Flashbacks, Gen or Pre-Slash, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, Praying Dean Winchester, Season/Series 08, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-04
Updated: 2013-01-04
Packaged: 2020-06-30 03:00:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19844179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustlines/pseuds/dustlines
Summary: Since confessing to Dean his fears about what he might do to himself if he returns to Heaven, Castiel has been feeling a little... off. Luckily for him, Dean's there to help, even if Castiel does not feel ready to talk about what's wrong.Takes place immediately following the events of 8x08, "Hunteri Heroici," when Castiel was staying at Fred Jones's retirement home.





	Breakdown Lanes

**Author's Note:**

> CW: mentions of suicidal ideation and Castiel remembering the deaths of other angels.

* * *

Castiel is sitting quietly on the floor beside Fred Jones's bed when Dean's first prayer comes through, clear as daylight and twice as warm, filling the empty caverns inside Castiel's mind where the multitudes of Heaven once sang endlessly.  
  
The prayer is brief. Dean says that he knows Castiel can't reply like this (and doesn't that just suck, that angel radio only works for them one-way?), but that Cas can always come back to him and Sam if he needs a place to be. That their home is his home, no matter how stupidly cheesy that sounds, and that Cas isn't alone with the crap in his head. Dean ends the prayer with a teasing warning not to let that one old lady's hands get too frisky, 'cause she looked like a wild one (Dean swears he can always tell), and Charles, whoever he once was, was probably a very lucky guy. There's amusement in Dean's tone, but Castiel gets the sense that it's forced for Castiel's benefit.  
  
Coming back to himself as Dean's voice fades, Castiel lets his eyes slip open, his cheeks tingling where his eyelashes had been resting. Although he's chosen to barely feel it, the room is slightly cold, a gurgling heating system ineffectually pushing hot water through pipes in the walls. Outside the lace curtains covering the windows, a star-speckled sky rests atop the world, its atmosphere sealing in heat like the blanket Castiel had earlier tucked around Fred's sleeping body. Though Castiel doesn't need warmth himself, the retirement home's resident feline mascot seems to disagree. The cat is lying curled up on Castiel's lap, a flap of Castiel's coat over the cat's fluffy, purring body.  
  
The cat and him, Castiel thinks, have come to a certain understanding, hard-earned through the promise of cat treats for good behavior. Over the past two nights, Castiel has had to heal several small scratches from his hands, but now, he places unmarked hands on the cat's orange and golden fur. Castiel does not move his fingers, only rests them there. The cat makes a confused noise, green eyes squinting up at him.  
  
"Dean cares too much," Castiel tells the cat, who only shuts his slatted eyes and begins to rumble even louder against Castiel's legs. "I don't know how to stop him." The purring is loud, an enthusiastic request for affection, and Castiel finally begins moving his hands across the small animal's lanky, soft body. "It's strange." The cat expands in reply, his inhale spreading throughout his chest before releasing in an even louder purr, which tapers off at the end of the sigh. In the chilled room, they share a comforting warmth, though if Castiel were told to say later that was what he intended, he would not be able to admit to it.  
  
Castiel's gaze drifts without conscious thought over to a certain corner of the room, where a curl of peeling wallpaper can be seen, partially hidden behind a chair where few people will ever notice the damage. He finds it difficult to look away, even this small sign of imperfection triggering some deep, lost feeling in him. He realizes, as he hears a meow, that his hands have tightened in the cat's fur.  
  
He apologizes with a gentle stroke, resettling the fur back to where it belongs. The cat, unbothered, puts his head down on Castiel's wrist and drifts off into sleep. Though the cat is asleep and so there is no reason to continue doing so, Castiel's free hand still travels softly over the cat's shoulders.  
  
After a while, cloaked by night and his own invisibility, Castiel continues, softly, "He thinks I deserve kindness."

* * *

  
Dean's prayers keep coming. Castiel gets the sense that Dean feels like he's intruding, and that is why the prayers are so short. Some of them are just locations: where Dean and Sam are for the night, how long they're going to be there, all the pertinent information Castiel would need to know to get to them if he so chose.  
  
A week in, Castiel takes Dean up on the offer. Before Dean can get through his description of the motel room's tattered, horrifyingly yellow shag carpet, Castiel has taken flight and landed on the very floor Dean is discussing. The color, Castiel thinks, is not nearly as jarring as Dean had made it out to be. Whatever a "Big Bird massacre" is supposed to look like, this does not appear to be it. The carpet is only a soft yellow.  
  
Dean startles with a look of shock, his surprise rather warranted given that this is the first time Castiel has taken him up on the offer of company since Castiel chose to stay behind at the retirement home.  
  
Castiel is holding cupcakes, two chocolate and one carrot, which he thinks Sam will surely appreciate when he returns here. The cupcakes are decorated with soft pink icing and housed in bright blue cups, their sugary, freshly baked warmth already lighting up the room. He hands one to Dean and sits opposite him at the motel room's single table, placing the carrot cupcake at the center of the table for safekeeping.  
  
"Cas?" Dean looks first at the cupcake and then up at Castiel. "Did you make these?"  
  
"It is Mrs. Rosenburg's 100th birthday today. She made a request. I agreed to honor it."  
  
"Wow." Dean looks wonderingly at the cupcake in his hand. Something happens to the corners of Dean's eyes that both softens them and causes the wrinkles at their edges to rise up in fondness. "That's awesome."  
  
"That was my intention." Castiel stares down at the cupcake in his own hands, unable to face the happiness on Dean's face. Castiel peels off one edge of the cupcake's bright blue wrapper, revealing the smooth, dappled chocolate stem beneath the pink icing-covered puff. He chances a glance up at Dean as they both take their first bites, Castiel waiting for the approval in Dean's eyes before he allows his shoulders to relax.  
  
"I'll be damned," Dean's eyes shut as his teeth go down, an expression of euphoria on his face, "never thought a cupcake could be that good."  
  
Castiel fidgets in his chair, covering up his discomfort by taking another bite of his cupcake. So many unspoken words seem to grow louder in the air between him and Dean, and he's amazed Dean hasn't tried to bring any of them up yet. Castiel says, while chewing, "I'm told it's a family recipe."  
  
"Yeah?" Dean doesn't bother swallowing before speaking either, and Cas can see bits of pink creme and chocolate cake swirling around in Dean's mouth. "Friend of yours?"  
  
"I believe I was told...'Betty Crocker.'"  
  
Dean laughs, a wonderful sound even if part of his cupcake is lost to the way it spits out of his mouth, barely missing Sam's carrot cupcake on the table.  
  
"My compliments to the chef," he says, raising what's left of his cupcake to Cas. "Both her and you."  
  
Castiel nods. "Thank you." He takes a bite of his own cupcake, resolving to let himself enjoy its sweetness and utter lack of complexity. He knows every ingredient inside of this bit of food, knows how long it was cooked and at what temperature, and is not unpleasantly surprised by the results. "I enjoyed making them."  
  
Cas is surprised to realize he is telling the truth. On the other side of the table, Dean swallows in a way that looks somewhat painful. "Cas, I—"  
  
The unspoken words between them sharpen to a hard edge, and Castiel's heart starts beating too fast inside his chest. He realizes this is it: this is when Dean brings up their conversation on a hotel bed several weeks ago, the one interrupted before Dean could tell Castiel what he thought about Castiel's concerns about going back to Heaven, and what he might do once there. This is when Dean will make him face it.  
  
" _No_ , stop. Not now." Castiel spits out the words far harsher than he'd intended, if Dean's jolt backwards in his chair is any indication.  
  
Almost immediately feeling guilty, Castiel rests the remainder of his cupcake on the table in front of him, his fingers loosely curled around the wrapper. Already, he can feel the tentative calm he'd managed to bring to this table evaporating from his body, a tense, claustrophobic aura seeming to bind up his lungs instead. He can't seem to look up from the table, cannot face Dean, cannot handle talking about what he confessed to Dean before about what he might do if he goes back to Heaven.

Castiel breathes slowly until his heart has settled again. "Please," he says after a moment, his voice quiet, hoping Dean will understand without Castiel having to explain. "I only want to sit here, with you."  
  
A long pause drifts over them, the unspoken words in the air growing scattered and distant. Castiel is startled when the Dean's hand lightly brushes his own, even if only for a moment, before Dean leans back in his seat, the warmth of his touch slipping away.  
  
"Okay," Dean says, but he has the look of someone already trying to figure out when to bring the topic up later.

 _Maybe_ , Cas thinks, _that's a good thing_.  
  
There's a chocolate crumb in the space between Castiel's thumb and pointer finger, and when he brings his hand up to lick it off, he finds that his hand is trembling. Dean, to his credit, says nothing, and even manages to keep his worried gaze from feeling like it's burning when it rests gently on the top of Castiel's head, the angel curled up and unable to look at him any longer as he quietly finishes the rest of his cupcake.  
  
Even after they've finished eating, they sit there for quite some time, Castiel watching through slatted window blinds as snow falls onto the Impala's black hood in the parking lot outside the motel room. Meanwhile, Dean, unable to focus on anything else, only stares at Castiel.  
  
The right words, as it seems, are not so easy for either of them to find.

* * *

  
Some days are more difficult than others. Today, there are big, terrifying thoughts swirling around in Castiel's head. He thinks if he were human, he would call them nightmares, but he is not human, and he is not asleep, and they are not nightmares. They are memories. This makes them so much worse.  
  
In his memories, he sees the faces of dead angels: his siblings, their wings burned into sharp, charcoal arcs on the grass of what was once his favorite Heaven. Insects buzz around their mouths as he stands above them, knowing he is the cause of their deaths. This is to say nothing of the red-slicked rooms he left on Earth, human lives snuffed out by his hands and left to drape on the ground as if nothing more significant than little pieces of broken wire.  
  
He breaks a cup in the retirement home, just drops it from his fingers. He does not know why he let it go. The strawberry Kool-Aid inside the cup shatters along with the white ceramic, dashing sharp, red lines against the floor. He stares down at the wreckage, mutely, unable to breathe properly and trying to tell himself, it's all right. He's an angel. He doesn't need to breathe anyway.  
  
The second he is alone, he darts off to the Winchesters' motel room. A cavernous, gaping hole seems to jut through his chest when he finds the room empty, the beds made, the floor clean, no evidence of weaponry or salt lines on any surface. They're not here.  
  
He thinks he might be panicking, a realization that has been steadily growing in him ever since the day began. He has been showing up in the rooms Dean tells him about more frequently lately, either to just have company or to find a moment of quiet, whichever he needs. Dean has been letting him have both, but has been looking progressively more strained every time, as though he's starting to dread Castiel's sudden appearances. Perhaps he's given Castiel a false location today, to avoid the inconvenience.  
  
Castiel stumbles for the nearest bed, empty and smelling of detergent. He sits down hard, skin clammy as though a thousand invisible hands are churning below his veins — _Leviathans_ , or at least like them, a shadow of their presence, remembered and replayed. His body feels strung up as though by wires and hooks, while someone up above him yanks hard on every one.  
  
He wraps his arms around his body, pulling his coat tighter as though to take control back, an impossible goal. The pull of his sword lies heavily within his coat, a warmth that he could summon to his hand from even a great distance, a vehicle for his own purposes and desires, and right now every part of him wants to make everything stop as quickly as possible.  
  
Dean has said that if he ever starts to feel like this, he should find someone to calm him down, but there is nobody here. He has to find calmness on his own.  
  
He sits on his hands and breathes hard for nearly an hour, struggling to keep his heartbeat steady and his hands off the metal blade that could make the pain stop. All the while, his nightmare memories replay again and again, until he swears he has begun to even smell the blood of those he killed and started to hear their screaming last words blasting through his ears.  
  
When Dean's prayer-sent voice cuts into the room's actual silence, Castiel stumbles right to where he is so quickly he thinks he might have shattered a window in his descent. He must look terribly out of control, for Dean's eyes get so wide in response to his sudden appearance that Castiel knows he's made a mistake coming here before having calmed down. Dean won't want to see this or deal with this. This is messy, unkempt, unbefitting an angel, even one as damned as he is.  
  
Dean surprises him, though, his warm arms wrapping so tightly around Castiel's back, like he actually wants him to be there. Castiel can't get a word in edgewise, barely able to gasp against Dean's shoulder that he's scared — something he hadn't even planned to say; it had just slipped out — before Dean's hands are running up and down his back and soft, gentle "shhhh's" are being whispered up against his ear.  
  
Castiel fumbles inside his coat, gripping his sword and thrusting it blindly behind him. "Get this away from me," he chokes, only half-aware of Sam's leap forward to do just that.

* * *

  
"What happened?" Dean mutters to him nearly two hours later, but Castiel isn't sure how to answer. "To trigger that, I mean."  
  
"I don't know." Castiel's voice is weakened, exhausted from hyperventilating and embarrassed by how pointless it had been to do so. Dean and Sam had only switched hotels due to a simple gas leak at the one they'd originally stopped at. His overreaction had been overwhelming and absurd. There had been no effort to avoid him after all.  
  
"Don't be ridiculous." Dean's side of the bed dips as he shifts towards the nightstand, putting down the faded Bukowski paperback he'd been reading so that he and Castiel can talk more freely. "You _do_ know." Neither has moved or made a sound until this moment for nearly an hour, save for Dean's occasional page-turning, and even that had become less frequent as the hunter's mind had become more and more preoccupied by the angel laying facedown on the mattress beside him.  
  
Castiel curls his fists, the only part of him not hidden by the blanket Sam had stretched over him earlier, the younger Winchester having landed a gentle press of his hand against Castiel's blanket-covered head before leaving to get dinner for them all. "I broke a cup."  
  
Dean pauses. Castiel can't see him because there's too much blanket over his head, but he can hear the slow breath Dean takes in as he mulls over that thought. Dean's legs shift, one denim-clad leg moving around until it's resting atop the other. He's been sitting crosslegged against the headboard all this time, and Castiel supposes he must be getting uncomfortable.  
  
"That's a lot less of a trigger than visiting Heaven would be," Dean says, after a while. He is trying to be casual, but his alarm is obvious in the tension stretched through every line and every muscle of his body.  
  
Castiel frowns, no matter that Dean can't see any more of him than the fists he has stretched out slightly above his head and the lump of his body beneath a blanket that's nearly the same color as the coat he's still wearing. "I'm aware of that." His voice comes out mumbled, suffused through the thickness of the fleece above him and the smooth, soft cotton below. "I share your concerns, in regards to my... current behavior."  
  
"Okay." Dean rolls words around on his tongue, maybe to test their effectiveness internally before finally saying, "What are we gonna do about this?" He touches Castiel's shoulder through the blanket, a question, and then adds, hesitantly, "I don't think even you knew it had gotten this bad."  
  
Castiel doesn't know where to begin. He just stretches his arm a bit further, peeking out from the soft blanket until he can loosely touch the side of Dean's shirtsleeve with his fingertips. "I need help."  
  
Castiel doesn't need to see Dean's face to know that it's softening, though perhaps a bit of tension must remain beneath the hunter's eyes when he says, "I'm helping you."  
  
"No, I mean..." Castiel takes a soft, short breath, hitching on the exhale when Dean runs a hand across his shoulders through the blanket. He lets his eyes slip shut, reassured despite himself by the kindness of the touch. "I'm afraid of myself. Of what I might do."  
  
The bed dips when Dean leans over and gently peels back the part of the blanket covering Castiel's head. The air is colder outside the pocket of warmth Castiel had established beneath the blanket, and he shivers and untucks his face from the mattress to look up at Dean.  
  
The hunter's gaze, outlined by the pale glow of the lamp on the nightstand, is troubled. Whereas before Dean had made great efforts to hide his concern, seemingly for Castiel's benefit, now he seems to have no boundaries at all, and his worry pours off of him like he's made of it.  
  
"Cas." He reaches under the blanket, just enough to tug the angel up by the armpit. "You tell Sam about this, I'll kill you both."  
  
As he pulls Castiel upwards, Dean slides further down the bed, all the while dragging Castiel, complete with his bundled blanket, up against his chest. His chin presses down on Castiel's head, locking the angel in place as Dean's arms come up to surround him. The blankets had been warm, but Dean is warmer still. This close, Castiel can even sense the unique etching of Enochian protective sigils, driven deep into Dean's ribcage by Castiel's own hands so long ago.  
  
Dean's throat flexes against Castiel's forehead as he swallows, out of discomfort or something else entirely, Castiel doesn't know.  
  
"Okay," the hunter breathes, somewhat unsteadily. His heartbeat is speeding up, tangled up with nerves. "Is this good, or...? Because the last time I hugged you, you kind of locked up, and—"  
  
"I'm all right." Castiel nods, at least as much as he can with Dean's head above him. The points of Dean's elbows are a heavy, but not confining weight behind him, warmth being rubbed into his back by a pair of calloused hands. An odd tightness expands in Castiel's chest, making it difficult to breathe. He is not accustomed to being cared for, or even to the process of needing someone to care for him, but Dean seems more than willing to offer, and Castiel's reserve is breaking. "Are _you_ all right?"  
  
Above him, Dean exhales with difficulty, like he's letting go of some great and terrible pain. The breath tickles hotly across Castiel's head, flickering heat through the short strands of hair on the back of Castiel's neck.  
  
"I've been worse." Dean tugs the tan blanket higher over Castiel's shoulders, folding it around him tightly. "You'll get better, Cas, I'll make sure of it."  
  
Castiel nods, though he's not so sure. He feels Dean's chin move with him, a subtle pressure on the top of his head. Castiel doesn't reach to hold him back, unsure both if he's allowed, and if he even deserves it.  
  
"You have to keep trying to help yourself, too." Dean's voice is unnervingly tinged with what Castiel thinks might be fear, like Dean is expecting to hear something he won't like but has no power to change. "You know that, right?"  
  
Castiel's jaw clenches so tightly it starts to ache. "Dean—"  
  
"You have to, stupid. That's how it works. If someone asks you to stay alive, you have to at least make an effort." A note of anger flickers in his voice, tightly repressed. Dean's been making a far greater effort lately to be calm around Castiel, but sometimes he can't hold it all back. After all they've been through, reestablishing any trace of their original bond is a work in progress.  
  
Castiel sighs, shutting his eyes against Dean's shirt, where the rough edge of Dean's collar meets the skin of his neck. "I will do what I can."  
  
It's the best he can offer, but from the way Dean's arms tense around his back, he suspects that, for Dean, it's just not good enough.  
  
But for now, it'll just have to do.  
  
  
  
.

  
2013.01.04

[.](https://dustlines.livejournal.com/4650.html)


End file.
